Squib and His Friends. Everett-Green Evelyn
of the views from the carriage window.
It was dark when they reached Interlaken, and Squib had been for some time asleep, leaning against his father’s shoulder. He did not remember much about the arrival that night, nor how he got into that funny little narrow wooden bed, with its big square pillows and little white eider-down quilt. But after sleeping the sound, dreamless sleep of childhood for a number of hours, Squib suddenly woke up very wide to find the room bright with sunshine, and to realize, after a few moments of utter perplexity, that he was really in Switzerland at last. With a great throb of sudden excitement he got quickly out of bed and pattered across the cold polished floor to the window. A white curtain was drawn across it, but in a moment Squib had pulled this aside, and then he gave one great gasp and stood perfectly still – a little white figure, with a tumbled head of yellow-brown curls, and a pair of big grey eyes fixed immovably upon something outside that window, as though they would never be detached from the sight.
And what was it that Squib saw? A great white dazzling peak rising up in stately grandeur against the glorious blue of the summer sky. The sunlight bathed it in golden light. In that wonderful brilliant clearness of early morning, space seemed annihilated, and the grand snow-peak seemed to Squib to be strangely near – keeping silent watch and ward over the valley below and all the inhabitants of it. It was flanked and supported, as it were, by a whole range of rocky, snow-crowned mountains, yet seemed to stand alone, lifting its majestic head into the very heavens. Squib stood and gazed with wonder, awe, and rapture, until the scene was graven into his memory for ever. What Lisa had said about the spell of the snow-mountains was all true. He had begun already to feel it himself. He stood before the window lost to all sense of his surroundings, hearing none of the sounds about him, knowing nothing of where he was – eyes and heart and soul alike gone out to that lonely queen of the mountains, standing out in dazzling radiance against the brilliance of the morning sky. How long he thus stood he never knew, and he was only brought back to the things of the present by the sound of a laughing voice behind him.
“Hallo, old chap! – lost in the clouds already? Has the Jungfrau bewitched you altogether? Or are you ready for anything so sublunary as breakfast?”
Squib turned round with a jump to find that Uncle Ronald had come in from his room next door, and to feel that his own cheeks were wet, just as if he had been crying, and he was quite positive he had not even been thinking of anything so silly!
“Come, hurry up, youngster! You are late already; and we mean to go off to Grindelwald after breakfast, so you must look sharp! Yes, she’s a grand lady is the Jungfrau – she gets at all of our hearts in a fashion; but hurry up now and come down to the breakfast-room. Mountain air gives one a fine appetite, as you’ll find out before long.”
Squib woke out of his dream only to find himself in a country of enchantment. He hurried through his toilet, and descended to find his party (with the exception of his mother, who was keeping to her room to recover from the fatigues of the journey) seated at one end of a very long table, of which they were the only occupants, and was soon seated beside them discussing omelette and cutlet with fried potato chips, queer curly rolls, and golden honey, with all the zest of a growing boy and of a mountain traveller. Meantime he gleaned from the talk of his companions that they were about to drive into the heart of some of those mysterious regions of which he had hitherto dreamed, without daring to hope to see them. The glacier at Grindelwald, the wonderful fall of the Staubbach, the Wengern Alp, Lauterbrunnen and Mürren! He heard the names in a vague and dreamlike fashion, but hardly knew what was settled, and did not trouble to ask. What did it matter where they went in such a region of wonders? Wherever they went, that great towering peak must be near at hand, and if he had that to look at he felt he need ask no more.
Three or four wonderful days were passed by Squib in this fairy region. Each day the same carriage came to the door, with the same two strong, small, but willing and active little horses. He was set on the box beside the broad-faced driver, with whom he soon established terms of mutual intimacy, and after a little while he found himself able to exchange ideas with him with perfect freedom. He talked very much the same odd guttural language that Lisa had spoken when she was excited and in earnest, and in a very short time all Squib’s old fluency came back to him. He was interpreter to the whole party, and not a little proud of his position in that respect; but what he enjoyed even more was getting Johann to tell him all about the mountains, the people who lived amongst them, what they did in the long, dark winter months, when the snow came down and shut them in week after week and month after month; how the men in summer went out as guides and porters, and took travellers across the passes and up the great white peaks; and how the women stayed at home and tilled the land, and made provision against the winter season, driving their flocks of goats out into the green hills, and making quantities of cheese, some to sell and some to lay by to be consumed when the dark, cold season set in.
Johann had once been a guide himself, till a slight accident had hindered him from any more mountaineering, and had obliged him to take to the less exciting life of a driver during the busy summer season. But Squib learned, to his deep excitement and delight, that his new friend had twice made the ascent of the Jungfrau, and he made him give him every detail of the climb, and listened with breathless interest to the story each time it was related.
Another friend Squib made at this time was an old man who stood at a certain place in the roadway, where was a wonderful echo, and blew an immense long horn whenever visitors passed, so that they could hear the echoes reverberating and resounding backwards and forwards amongst the hills, till it seemed as if there were hundreds of voices all answering each other in weird cries. Squib could have listened to these echoes for ever, and also to the stories the old man had to tell about the caves in the hills, and the wonders of torrent and valley. He twice spent an hour with him whilst others of the party were resting or sketching, and having won the old man’s confidence, both by his talk and by the gift of sundry coins, he was allowed to blow the great horn himself once or twice, a thing which filled him with delight, although he did not find himself very successful in bringing out the deeper and more powerful notes as the old man was able to do.
Of his wonder and awe at the sight of the great glacier and its blue caves, or of those feelings which the sight of the dazzling snow-peaks awoke within him, Squib never tried to speak. Those about him were not even sure whether any very deep impression was made by them; but his observations on the manners and customs of the country would come out at intervals with a sudden rush, as when sitting at dinner on the eve of their departure for the chalet, he suddenly broke out, —
“I shall be sorry to go away for some things,” – this in answer to a question from his mother – “though I want to get to the chalet very much. But everything here is very funny and very interesting. I shall be sorry not to have Johann and the horses any more. Will everything be as funny up there as it is here?”
“How is it all funny?” asked Uncle Roland.
“Oh, every way, you know. But I was thinking of the horses just then. I like the horses here, but I think it’s very confusing for them to have to go the wrong side of the road always. I can’t think how they remember so well. I think perhaps it’s because they grow their manes the wrong side too – to help them to remember. Most of them have them manes on the wrong side. I asked Johann about it, but he didn’t seem to understand that it was wrong. I’m glad we didn’t bring Charger; he wouldn’t have liked it at all. But the horses here don’t mind it. I think they are very good-tempered. They have such kind faces, and they like to be talked to. They don’t wear blinkers, hardly ever, except in the carriages. I think that’s rather nice for them. They can see the country as they go along. I wonder if they like seeing the snow-mountains very much! I think it’s nice that they can look about them the same as we do.”
But after all, the pleasure and excitement of getting to their mountain home was greater than anything else. It took the best part of a day to reach it, because, although the distance was not very great, there was no direct road, and they had to take a circuitous route, which Squib found very delightful, though some of the party wished it had been a little less tedious.
First, there was a long carriage drive with Johann, behind a great coach-like conveyance and four horses, through winding, ascending roads, with the usual accompaniments of men with great horns, children selling